What-a-lotta terracotta.  In Sydney’s lower north shore it is difficult to avoid the deadly orange plague.  Suburb after suburb drips in finials and Marseilles roof tiles.  On a house built in the early part of the twentieth century they look appropriate.  For new houses they look a sham.

Being the owner of an internationally acclaimed and highly awarded inner city Sydney warehouse conversion (Grant House, Surry Hills) you would think that Stephen Grant would never want to move.  However strange things happen, and again he has brought in his architect, Graham Jahn, to convert a two-storey ironmonger’s workshop in the next suburb into a contemporary art gallery with residence above.

Bruce Rickard is a pivotal member of the Sydney School generation of architects from the 1960s and 1970s that developed an architectural vernacular response to the sloping rugged bushland sites of Sydney. 

A tree-lined street on Sydney’s north shore is home to small older style bungalows and larger, newer trophy homes. This project by the new partnership of Atom has all the qualities of the former and none of the excesses of the latter.

The serenity.  It can come in different forms for different people.  For the occupants of this terrace house in Sydney’s inner east they can thank Shelley Indyk of Indyk Associates for the remodelling that has resulted in an arrangement of calm serene spaces with a unique connection to landscape.

Everone seems to have an opinion about Bondi. There has been a lot of attention about the place in the last few years especially when it was most notably featured on “The Block”, one of the television programmes that give people the impression renovating is easy. For all the hype about its glamour however, this suburb can be a pretty ugly place.

Cities are often defined by their raw, foundation material – London by its Portland stone, New York by its brownstone and Melbourne by its bluestone. In Sydney it is, of course, sandstone – which novelist Peter Carey once referred to as the city’s DNA. 

Don’t you just love reading about the Sydney property market? One week we are going through a massive lifestyle shift towards apartment living. Next, there is an oversupply and we are building the slums of the future. Whatever the hype, apartments remain a viable option for those buying their first home or anyone keen to live close to the city.

The sun was shining, the harbour was sparkling and this was the sort of place that puts your faith back in Sydney living. If Sydney is all about the harbour then this new home by Molnar Freeman Architects is a great place to take advantage of it.

“What was I thinking?” asks architect Drew Heath, “I like to do things that are different and they are just such a cliché.”  He is referring to the bi-fold doors that open out from the living room to the courtyard of this recently remodelled house in one of Sydney’s eastern beach suburbs.